Handel Architects

115 Winthrop Square is Handel Architects’ new prism situated in the Financial District of Boston, and will give new definition and vitality to an important urban space. At 750 feet tall, the building is a synthesis of form: a complex, angular podium base resolving into a taut, slender tower, carefully positioned in a neighborhood of bulkier office structures. The shape and form of the tower will create a new visual pinnacle in the heart of the Financial District and on the city skyline. It will be a marker of the new 24-hour enhanced Financial District.

At the base of the building will be “The Great Hall” - a distinctive gathering place active through all seasons and a focal point for activity from morning into the evening. This new “urban room” of shape and size is intended to be inherently civic in scale and function. It is a public connector, a celebratory arcade conceived as a signature space finished with warm stone paving, shimmering metal panels and transparent glazing. Framing the 65-foot high volume is perhaps the most dramatic element: a lattice of soaring steel arches that shape the space and draw the eye up to an angular, vaulted ceiling. Extending from Winthrop Square through the building to Federal Street, the vaults define the layers of space between the central hall and the “aisles,” similar to a traditional galleria found in Milan or London.

A mezzanine wraps the interior of The Great Hall to provide overlooks across the space. Packed with restaurants, artisanal vendors, cafes and a continually changing program of performance activity and public events, the space becomes a scaffold for year-round urban interaction.

Straddling The Great Hall is a mid-rise wing of the “Office Solaria”: a set of interconnecting office convening spaces stacked within an articulated steel frame. The tower above, composed of residential apartments, is lozenge-shaped and oriented along the north-south axis. The high performance enclosure of the building is conceived as an articulated metal skin dissolving as it rises into a set of deeply etched glass planes, creating a lively, ever-changing pleated surface of light, shadow and refractions.

115 Winthrop Square will be over 1M sq. ft. of residential, office, and retail space.